I recently fired up my beloved 1946 only to realise again that it looks... lets say, a bit venerable in terms of graphics. Saw some videos on YT with IL-2 HD textures, mods and stuff, so it got me fired up.

I remember playing with the JG52 or something in a carrer mode, starting from Barbarossa up until Berlin, had 300+ shot down planes etc. That was like, i dont even know, lots and lots of sorties and missions.

Now that I'm in the mood and actually got some time to play, I want to ask you all which is the longest pilot career in terms of sorties/missions?

In my twelve years of experience in Il-2, the longest stock career was that for a Russian fighter pilot on the central/southern fronts. The longest sorties by far were in two careers, the stock career as a Romanian fighter pilot, and in the stock career for a Finnish fighter pilot. In some of the flights for the Romanian career, it could take more than half an hour to fly an IAR 80 or 81 from the west end of Crimea to the Kerch area; after each air battle around Kerch, it took another half-hour to fly back to Simferopol or wherever the home field was.

There were Finnish fighter pilot sorties which also required lengthy times. For some of these missions, the out and back legs could be very long and, in a Gladiator, Fiat or Buffalo, very slow. Transfer missions could take you from one end of Finland to the other. Then, too, I can recall having to fly triangular patrol circuits for what seemed like hours before enemy flights coming from the Leningrad area or from bases across the Gulf would finally appear.

I suspect that a US Army or Navy fighter pilot career in the Pacific could feature similarly lengthy distances and sortie times. Once, years ago, I started a stock US Army fighter pilot career in the PTO, but the interception missions flown from Port Moresby became so numerous and repetitious - essentially the same mission flown over and over and over again - that I ended up abandoning the career. I'll have to restart that career one day, to see if it's been changed sometime over the past decade.

The longest career in terms of number of missions as said above is probably the non-Leningrad soviet fighter career, that starts at Lvov and goes via many campaigns to Berlin. There are a lot of available aircraft you can change to, and I would advise you do.

The first campaign is the start of the war, and it's pretty short, the stock plane is the i16 mark 18, you can change that if you want, but it's probably short enough that you don't really need to.

The second campaign is retreating back toward the defence of Moscow, it's pretty long, the default plane is the i16/18 again, it's slow, under gunned and not much fun so I advise changing it.

The third campaign is of middling length, the default plane is a MiG3, with the standard gunnery package, I recommend changing that one too.

The fourth campaign is in the Crimea, you have to fight the usual Bf109s but also IAR80s, your default plane is the Yak1, and the IAR turns fractionally tighter, and is about as fast, so I'd take the i16/24, which is slower, but doesn't get caught in a turn fight. Then again, I like turn fighting, if you don't then maybe another plane would suit you.

There are something like a eight to a dozen more campaigns, there are different alternate planes in all of them, you don't have to fly the same plane in any two campains in the career if you don't want to.